Nature manifests in function
Being musically attuned is to rest the Mind in its natural, non-dual state. Music is the 'functioning' (zuòyòng 作用) through which Mind's nature (xìng 性) is seen. As Bodhidharma said: "(Buddha) Nature manifests in function ... In ears, it is called listening" (性在作用 ... 在耳曰聞). Music is neither enacted as a 'listening object' that is external to us—something 'out there'—nor as internal–something solely 'in the mind'. Rather, music appears through an effortless, non-conceptual, non-dual, spontaneous, ego-less process of tuning-with the music. This act of attunement is captured in the Germanic languages with the words equivalent to the German word Stimmung, such as stämning in Swedish (Wallrup, 2012). Musical attunement arises because of an attitude of non-involvement with phenomena. In contrast to ordinary modes of being, it is a state of non-doing and non-construction. In contrast to thinkers like Swanwick (1988) who considers music listening to be a kind of conceptual activity, I make the opposite argument: by bifurcating the non-dual attunement into subject and object, and by imposing conceptual categories and labels onto phenomena, perceiving sounds as non-music is what constitutes the conceptual activity. Music is the empty movement of Mind. Stillness and activity, silence and sound, are therein revealed to be of the same essence.
Music listening is therefore already soteriologically valuable, since recognizing and learning to rest in the non-dual nature of Mind—the overcoming of imposing subject-object and phenomena-essence dualisms onto experience—is one of the primal goals of Buddhist practice. In a verse describing his experience of awakening, satori, the poet Saigyō draws a clear causal link between the attunement to beauty and awakening:
Today's satori:
such a change of mind would
not exist without
my lifelong habit of having
my mind immersed in blossoms. (trans. LaFleur, 2003, 142)
We can replace the phrase "having my mind immersed in blossoms" in this verse with "being musically attuned". A life spent musically attuned is never in vain.
Our already awakened Buddha mind is never apart from us. Yet, as Dōgen says, "if there is the slightest discrepancy, the Way is as distant as heaven from earth" (trans. Waddell & Abe, 2002, 2). What causes this discrepancy between us and awakening? What causes saṃsāra? One reason for this discrepancy is expressed in the Huáyán saying that "phenomena (shì 事) can hide the universal principle (lǐ 理)". In other words, the sounds of music can behave in such a way as to hide the fact that they are, by nature, the empty movement of Mind. As the first patriarch Dùshùn (杜順) explains, it is like "when water becomes waves, the aspect of motion appears while the aspect of stillness does not appear at all" (Chang, 1971, 217). Despite the above affirmation of musical attunement as already the pure functioning of Buddha mind, music does not always work that perfectly. When does music hide its nature? John Cage described this as when the sounds of music pretend to be something that they are not: "...that it's a bucket, or that it's president, or that it's in love with another sound" (in Sebestik, 1992); it happens when the sounds of music ask to be heard symbolically–heard through concepts.
We can prevent this from happening by creating music that instead of concealing the empty nature of sounds allows for emptiness to arise as sounds. As stated above, nature manifests in function, and as Dùshùn points out, it is through phenomena themselves that emptiness can be revealed. This happens not when shì (phenomena) hides lǐ (universal principle/emptiness) but when shì intimates lǐ: "When shì grasps lǐ, shì is emptied and lǐ is substantiated; and because the shì is emptied, the lǐ that "dwells" in the total shì vividly manifests itself" (Chang, 1971, 217).
Ultimately, knowing how to use sounds wisely in order for lǐ to manifest itself in shì is a tacit process. It is about attuning ourselves to the dharmakāya, and becoming vessels through which "the dharmakāya expounds the dharma" (法身説法 hosshin seppō). It is such a process that Wáng Wéi captures in the single line "mountain moon beams: plucking the qín" (shān yuè zhào tán qín 山月照彈琴) in his perhaps most famous poem. The moon is a classic symbol of the luminous Mind of awakening. Conventionally, we would interpret this line as the juxtaposition of two elements of a single scene: the moonbeams and the playing of the qín. In reality, however, they are intertwined. The moonbeams are what play the qín, and the qín emits the light from the moon.
Late, I love but quietness:
Things of this world are no more my concern.
Looking back, I’ve known no better plan
Than this: returning to the grove.
Pine breezes: loosen my robe.
Mountain moon beams: play my lute [qín]
What, you ask, if Final Truth?
The fisherman’s song, strikes deep into the bank. (Cheng, 2016, 215)
Inspired as we may be by an intuitive, attunemental approach, we should not be afraid to study and discuss poetics in compositional terms. It is only by being intimate with sound that we can become intimate with emptiness. We can learn how to manipulate timbre, silences, phrasing, and textures in order to create a mode of attunement that intimates the state of just-sitting in meditative equipoise. By studying the qualities of music that successfully embodies emptiness, there are many things to learn about how to make emptiness shine forth in sound.
Besides the possibility of musical sounds hiding lǐ, music can also remove us from innate awakening in another way, but this other way is also one of music's assets. Beauty, because it is something that we like, can be the source of attachment to this world and what prevents us from liberation. As Dōgen, again, says: "If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion" (Waddell & Abe 2002, 3). The Buddhist tradition speaks of two primary forms of obscurations as being the root hindrances to awakening. Since musical attunement is a non-dual and non-conceptual state in which emptiness can reveal itself in forms, and form can reveal itself in emptiness, the major problem with music is not that it causes cognitive obscurations (jñeyā-varaṇa), but that it causes emotional obscurations (kleśā-varaṇa). We have to accept that this is a problem inherent to music, and can not simply reason it away in the way that Shunzei attempted to in his poetic treatise Korai fūteishō by quoting the Tendai statement that kleśa-s are nothing other than awakening (煩悩即菩提 bonnō soku bodai). Even if this statement is theoretically 'true' from the ultimate perspective of a Buddha, it has little soteriological value for us who are caught in saṃsāra and for whom kleśa-s are real causes of attachment and confusion.
In music, beauty appears to us as both that which invites us to dwell in the equanimous, non-dual state of Mind, and as a result of already being in that state. The problems that come with the kleśa-s associated with liking beauty can, therefore, not be eliminated by removing beauty since beauty is so closely connected to equanimity. Moments of beauty themselves are not the problem, but rather that we subsequently like these moments and crave for their repetition. Beauty itself is not only un-problematic, it is the opposite. As Nishida put it, by drawing upon the continental tradition of Kant and Schopenhauer's analysis of beauty as the result of disinterestedness, and by giving it a Buddhist explanatory framework: "the feeling of beauty is the feeling of muga [無我, Skrt. anātman, Eng. no-self] ... beauty can be explained as the discarding of the world of discrimination and the being one with the Great Way of muga; it therefore is really of the same kind as religion" (in Odin 1987, 217). Beauty is the phenomenal result of a non-dual, disinterested state of no-self. Without muga, there can be no beauty.
When we analyze how beauty and musical attunement come about, we notice that agreeable sounds–sounds that we like rather than dislike–often play a crucial part. Musical attunement does not usually feel like something that happens due to our own volition but instead appears to be caused by agreeable sounds. In this way, agreeable sounds in music contribute to the no-self of beauty and the non-duality of musical attunement. This means that they must be considered to be what Buddhists call skillful means (方便, Skrt. upāya), something leading to liberation.
We can, however, be more or less skillful in the application of agreeable sounds in order to intimate a state of equanimity. For example, by exploring poetic states of plainness, blandness, and by using slender, sparse, and thin textures, we can learn how to relish and find tastefulness in that which has very little taste. This will prepare us to taste the nature of Mind, which is so very plain and so amazingly bland. Sū Shì (蘇軾) famously found this quality in the plain poetry of Táo Yuānmíng (陶淵明): "The outside is withered, but the inside is rich. It seems bland but is actually beautiful" (Hinton, 2008). In this way, Mind is without taste "but at the same time is full of flavor" (Li, 2010, xiv). And because of this rich blandness of Mind, it is possible to be musically attuned even when there are no sounds at all. This is powerfully revealed in Yoko Ono's Stone Piece, the instruction to which simply reads "take the sound of the aging stone". Or take Lee Ufan who describes becoming "a stone for a while" when listening to the "infinite silence of immobile stones" (2018, 289). He attunes himself non-dually to the sound of stones. Listening to Ono's piece in this way is to be in a state of musical attunement, but an attunement in which there are no sounds stirring our emotions.
In the aesthetics of Abhinavagupta, such a 'mood' of complete peace, śāntarasa, is not only the apex of aesthetic emotions but simultaneously the "highest of human aims and [what] results in spiritual liberation" (in Dhvanyāloka, trans. Reich, 2016). I am, however, not completely convinced that awakening can be equated with an aesthetic state, no matter how non-emotional, non-dual, or non-conceptual it may be. However, relishing the non-dual blandness of music can take us toward awakening, but precisely because it is still an aesthetic relishing of form or formlessness, it does not quite take us there. "If there is the slightest discrepancy, the Way is as distant as heaven from earth" (Dōgen, trans. Waddell & Abe, 2002, 2). If there is one piece that comes close to completely closing the gap between the realm of aesthetic modes and awakening, it must be Ono's Stone Piece. Listening to it has the same flavor as that of just-sitting (只管打坐) without thinking (非思量 hishiryō).
The moment we enact our Buddha nature, we are necessarily beyond the enjoyment of music. Music intimates emptiness, it acts as skillful means. Its purpose is to guide us on the path. It does this, as Lǐ Zéhòu beautifully captured it, by "evoking, through aesthetic form, a faint, tranquil emotion or state of mind from which one can merge with, touch upon, or realize the purpose of the universe, the meaning of time, or the mystery of eternity" (2010, 170). These evocations and vague emotions belong to the aesthetic realm rather than to the realm of awakening, but presenting these faint affective qualities to the listeners allows them to intimate the state of awakening more successfully than when presenting mere empty space, presenting nothing at all. According to Lǐ, art would not be art without these faint emotions. Thus, writing a 'Chán poem'–that is, something that serves both as an aesthetic moment as well as a moment of enacting Buddhahood–is impossible: "what results is neither Chán nor poetry" (2010, 170). The task for the artist is therefore "to be Chán without being Chán" (2010, 170). The evocations and soft emotions expressed through art and aesthetic forms give us inspiration and faith to continuously let awakening unfold. Their blandness gives us a taste of the tasteful tastelessness of our Buddha mind. In the end, however, we will reach a point where we have to abandon art, since "in a poem that is not a poem, Chán is evident” (2010, 170), or: in musical attunement which is not music, the mind of the Buddha is revealed. Like in the famous raft metaphor, art is something we have to give up after having crossed the river. However, upon having crossed this river, the dualism between art and non-art, between emotion and awakening, is revealed to have been illusory all along: kleśa-s are nothing other than awakening (煩悩即菩提 bonnō soku bodai), and music is the 'functioning' (zuòyòng 作用) through which Mind's nature (xìng 性) is seen.
A monk asked Fengxue: "Without speaking, without silence, how can you express the truth?"
Fengxue observed: "I always remember springtime in southern China. The birds sing among innumerable kinds of fragrant flowers." (Reps, 1961, 109)
